By selling a better product and gaining peoples respect and trust. What a fucking idea.
For instance, when I first got into the PC scene with my own computer [around 98'] I bought random socket 7 boards, socket A boards, etc... I learned that ECS and such companies make shit products and ASUS boards are always of high quality [never had to take one back and never had any serious trouble upgrading cpu/ram].
I just recently bought a P4 system and specifically asked for an Asus motherboard.
I didn't buy the ASUS board because they have easily copyable features like built-in flash, stepless overclocking, good thermal protection. I'm sure Abit, GB and ECS have similar functionality and are probably cheaper [though this board P4P800S only cost me 110$ CDN]. I bought the ASUS board because I'm a loyal and happy ASUS mobo user.
I'll buy an apple when they offer something I need and can't get from an x86/Linux. I wouldn't buy an apple just because it has an aqua desktop theme or crappy puck-mice or etc...
And I'm sure many others think similar to me [or reasonably close]. So if Apple is wondering why sales are slow [though I doubt they're hurting] it's because they [for all intents and purposes] sell over priced PCs.
Generally the "quality" argument I'd say is true but you just have to be smart about it. Avoid companies that make total trash hardware [ECS for instance]. x86 boxes are not that "unreliable" as to make the cost difference that meaningful. For instance, all in all my current box [512MB DDR400, P4 2.8Ghz, MSI ti200 128MB, 80GB maxtor IDE, LG CDRW/DVD, case, 450W PSU, sound card, tv tuner, 17" monitor] would cost retail about 1300$ CDN.
A PowerMac G4 costs 1299$ USD from the apple store. I doubt a 1.25Ghz G4 is as fast as a 2.8Ghz P4 [even given the shorter pipeline]. The next step up G5 costs 1700$ USD [roughly 2400$ CDN].
So is it worth spending 1100$ CDN more "just because" it's a mac? No, not really. And that's the most likely reason why Apple sales suck. Not because somebody made an Aqua theme for KDE.
It may be specifically different lawyers but the money comes from the same place.
Instead of spending that million or two on suing people over aqua like desktops [etc] they could spend that million or two giving more resources to research and development or the iTMS lawyers...
I bought a decently spec'ed Compaq Presario. For the money I spent it was a decent deal. 1600$ CDN for a AMD 2400+ Mobile [1.8Ghz Barton basically], 256MB of ram, 60GB of disk, built-in wifi and lan, floppy drive, CDRW/DVD, parallel/serial/2xUSB/Firewire and a built in modem.
I challenge you to find an equal laptop that has better Linux support for the same October 2003 price from a *retailer*. None of these fly-by-night vendors running out of the back of a corner store, etc...
Yes I'm pissed off that it doesn't support Linux better but that's mitigated by two things. 1. It's a good laptop otherwise and 2. some kernels boot and others don't so I'm inclined to believe that while the hardware cut-corners is a problem I think the inability for a proper kernel [automated] configuration is as much to blame.
I've built quite a few kernels [most of the 2.4.xx series at one point or another] and have never had this problem. Googling is hit and miss about kernel problems, etc...
I tried gentoo. The boot cd [2004.0] worked [2.4.24-something, the 2004.1 cd didn't] but would not work with acpi.
Most likely I missed a config option but I checked the laptop's.config against my desktop [running gentoo with 2.4.26] and couldn't spot anything. Essentially I think it just didn't set the built-in keyboard as a default. The boot gets to local [e.g. passes through hotplug and all the other jazz] but just won't accept keyboard input.
Knoppix isn't for me as I need the flexibility of Gentoo, I crave it!!!
The big deal with me is attrition, after spending hours doing a bootstrap build only to find the kernel didn't work [and I tried various configs with USB disabled, enabled, etc] it still didn't work I lost my patience.
Most likely there's a single line in a mysterious config file somewhere I have to change to get the keyboard to work but again I want to *USE* my laptop not build Linux over and over and over with it [including the wear/tear that puts the laptop through].
As much as that sounds plausible it's not always. My Presario 2180CA laptop [for instance] is fairly Linux resilient. ACPI crashes it and repeatedly it fails to detect the keyboard [I've never had to "configure" a keyboard]. It got to the point where I just put WinXP on my laptop [well the copy that came with my laptop] because I simply just wanted to *USE* my laptop.
So really hardware vendors have to stop cutting corners before you can just blanket state "oh just use Linux".
Well, on the plus side renting TV station costs money, in turn causes taxation.
Those idiots on TV praising jebuz are funding your military. now if you didn't have a warlord president you'd have your ABC's in school instead of your Afghanistan, Bombing, Country's.;-)
Makes me totally sick that they can legitimately spend billions on a war that NOBODY else but the bush puppet Blair supports and then actively screw millions of young adults out of post secondary education.
Anyways back on topic. if you look at TV from a digital cables point of view you need only one channel [well then channels for people you share the cable with]. So this 66 channels of "nothing on" is really waste anyways.
People with analogue tv's ought to get in the modern age. [Or just skip TV and read more].
It's called ratings. People see low ratings they don't buy advertising during your show. That means the TV network won't want to carry your show.
In the end most [really] bad shows work themselves off the air quickly. The other 95% of quality made low story-content shows [re: friends, seinfeld, etc...] linger on forever...
Which begs another question, what lets you decide what is a "good" use of spectrum? Lots of people watch Friends but I still think it's a cliche tired boring pathetic wannabe comedy [I'd rather watch "family matters"].;-)
I don't think anyone says that nuclear waste should just be stored in peoples basements or something.
Alternatives are good but you have to measure the whole system [e.g. as a closed system]. If it takes you X units of energy [W or J take your pick] to produce Y units of energy than the Y/X ratio is a rough estimate of the effectiveness.
So while it's good to promote alternative energy research mindlessly saying "down with nuclear" has serious downfalls. Less computers, no A/C, less cars, less entertainment, etc, etc, etc...
Not the end of the world but it's not a price most people are willing to pay.
Yeah, hydrodams just polute [re: lead, iron and various chemicals] lakes. Solar cells are made of things that can kill humans [and many animals], don't last forever AND MUST BE THROWN OUT!
It's easy to say "oh nuclear power bad" but the risk/waste/gain ratio is probably not that bad all considering. Nuclear power most certainly makes more power than both Solar and Wind combined.
But fine cut nuclear out. Just stop driving cars, using computers and eating packaged food. All that takes energy that solar/wind alone probably could not provide.
"No nuclear waste, no potential for meltdowns, no potential for dirty bombs, etc ec"
I'll take it you haven't spent much time in the "real world". Please define anything profitable [$$$, energy or otherwise] that is "totally without risk"?
Heck even hydrodams polute and damage the environment. Solar cells are made of totally messy materials, wind generators disturb air flows, etc, etc, etc...
With enough precautions anything can be acceptably safe [e.g. not likely to cause serious harm] but nothing is totally safe.
"No child left behind act." So long as you don't want post-secondary education cuz afterall what's another 25 billion dollars to fund a war crime...
Seems to me what the US needs is a complete 180 turn in policy. Chop down the miliary *while* heavily subsidizing post-secondary education. Give the war-brats [young 20s] who signed up with the military an easy ride [e.g. scholarships] through school.
Of course you won't see that happening... it's not politically motivating.
[sick comment] I'm not surprised about what happened to Berg. Why? Simple. What better way to gain support for the war specially in light of the various abuse "scandals". It would not surprise me to find that those 5 people in the video were either americans or funded by americans. [/sick comment]
MS in this case could take the userland tools and kernel, release those under GPL but then make their own proprietary hotplug/portage database which is not GPL.
So you couldn't just buy one copy of MS-Linux and re-sell it since the distribution is not GPL, just certain components of it.
3. Did they fix any of the annoying problems from the GBA (more SRAM, wider data bus, faster cpu, larger screen pixel count)?
If all they did was tack on a touch sensitive screen to the GBA SP then we're gonna be stuck with the same SNES re-write lame-ass side scrolling games...
Sure PocketNES is fun er... I mean e-reader but I would love to be able to play quake or something on a portable [other than a 500$ PDA].
Athlon-XPs don't have easily accessible idle modes. Intel processors do [via HLT opcode]. So when both boxes are idle the PM is taking 6W and the Athlon-XP is basically taking the full power.
So the diff is really 64W or 0.064Kwh so diff is around 2.2 years.;-)
Though the stability of Intel cpus alone is worth it. Have yet to have my P4 box shutdown because a 10 minute test run of a program [full load] over heats the core...
Yeah but that's such a scam. My cpu has a 800Mhz FSB. Nice right? Goes perfect with my 400Mhz DDR memory....
All this quad/double pumping sounds nice but hides a problem that really is the bottleneck. LATENCY!
That is my cpu can only send control info over the bus at 200Mhz. So while it can send 6GB/sec to my Northbridge if I fetch stuff from random addresses I effectively have a 200Mhz bus....
I'm sure what will save the Dothan is the huge 2MB cache [provided it has a decently high hit rate].
Being a gamer of the 80's/90's and having NEVER played Civ [though I have played warcraft etc] solely because the game didn't appeal doesn't really make him sound like a computing god to revere.
I dunno how about the inventors of the Burrow-Wheeler-Transform [BWT] which is used by thousands of people daily [bzip2 for instance].
How about Lenstra, Pollard et al. for inventing the Quadratic Sieve and other factoring algorithms that put public key crypto into perspective?
What about Donald Knuth [if he's not already in there] for putting Computer Science in a accurate and concise series of texts? And inventing TeX a system quite a few people use to submit academic papers, write books and score music.
etc...
Stupid game developers while cool and all are not that influential. I'm sure the world would go on as normal if Doom3 didn't hit the shelves this year... etc...
Anyways yeah that's about what I expect. This upcoming monday is the 60th day. Next tuesday if I don't have my laptop back I'm demanding a replacement laptop on the spot.
If they refuse I'm gonna see what 2000$ worth of electronic organizers look like under my feet;-)
I dropped my laptop off [clicking harddisk that would lock up] March 19th.
When I called in mid april they told me the 60 days starts from when Compaq gets it [which was March 28th] cuz otherwise that wouldn't be fair for the store.
I told them to f off and read them the 400$ warranty claim I bought when I got my laptop. So in around 10 days I either get my laptop back or a brand new one.
But seriously, replacing the hardisk and testing takes all of an hour todo. Fuck if they just bought me a hard disk I could do it myself....
I'd take your sentiment further though. Laptops are nice to have when they work but they're useless [and expensive] when in the shop. I make money by writing software. Not having a laptop to work with when I'm at school sets me back [fortunately I have a desktop at home...].
My advice would be to lease not buy a laptop. That way when the laptop breaks you just don't pay the lease. Sure it may cost more [usual lease being 50-100$/mo] but considering I paid 2000$ for my laptop and only planned on keeping it for 3 years [max] not having it for two months is a pain.
This guide may be ok if you're past the manufacturers warranty and you didn't get an instore one...
But for me, I got a 3yr [practically useless] warranty from Futureshop. I'll let them [or their sub-contractors] fix problems with my laptop.
Though if I had todo it again I would probably a) not buy a laptop and b) not get an extended warranty. It's been nearly 60 days since I dropped of my laptop to have the hard drive replaced.
nearly 90% of the time Futureshop had my laptop it was sitting in their warehouse awaiting transport...Such a waste.
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By selling a better product and gaining peoples respect and trust. What a fucking idea.
For instance, when I first got into the PC scene with my own computer [around 98'] I bought random socket 7 boards, socket A boards, etc... I learned that ECS and such companies make shit products and ASUS boards are always of high quality [never had to take one back and never had any serious trouble upgrading cpu/ram].
I just recently bought a P4 system and specifically asked for an Asus motherboard.
I didn't buy the ASUS board because they have easily copyable features like built-in flash, stepless overclocking, good thermal protection. I'm sure Abit, GB and ECS have similar functionality and are probably cheaper [though this board P4P800S only cost me 110$ CDN]. I bought the ASUS board because I'm a loyal and happy ASUS mobo user.
I'll buy an apple when they offer something I need and can't get from an x86/Linux. I wouldn't buy an apple just because it has an aqua desktop theme or crappy puck-mice or etc...
And I'm sure many others think similar to me [or reasonably close]. So if Apple is wondering why sales are slow [though I doubt they're hurting] it's because they [for all intents and purposes] sell over priced PCs.
Generally the "quality" argument I'd say is true but you just have to be smart about it. Avoid companies that make total trash hardware [ECS for instance]. x86 boxes are not that "unreliable" as to make the cost difference that meaningful. For instance, all in all my current box [512MB DDR400, P4 2.8Ghz, MSI ti200 128MB, 80GB maxtor IDE, LG CDRW/DVD, case, 450W PSU, sound card, tv tuner, 17" monitor] would cost retail about 1300$ CDN.
A PowerMac G4 costs 1299$ USD from the apple store. I doubt a 1.25Ghz G4 is as fast as a 2.8Ghz P4 [even given the shorter pipeline]. The next step up G5 costs 1700$ USD [roughly 2400$ CDN].
So is it worth spending 1100$ CDN more "just because" it's a mac? No, not really. And that's the most likely reason why Apple sales suck. Not because somebody made an Aqua theme for KDE.
Tom
It may be specifically different lawyers but the money comes from the same place.
Instead of spending that million or two on suing people over aqua like desktops [etc] they could spend that million or two giving more resources to research and development or the iTMS lawyers...
Tom
I bought a decently spec'ed Compaq Presario. For the money I spent it was a decent deal. 1600$ CDN for a AMD 2400+ Mobile [1.8Ghz Barton basically], 256MB of ram, 60GB of disk, built-in wifi and lan, floppy drive, CDRW/DVD, parallel/serial/2xUSB/Firewire and a built in modem.
I challenge you to find an equal laptop that has better Linux support for the same October 2003 price from a *retailer*. None of these fly-by-night vendors running out of the back of a corner store, etc...
Yes I'm pissed off that it doesn't support Linux better but that's mitigated by two things. 1. It's a good laptop otherwise and 2. some kernels boot and others don't so I'm inclined to believe that while the hardware cut-corners is a problem I think the inability for a proper kernel [automated] configuration is as much to blame.
I've built quite a few kernels [most of the 2.4.xx series at one point or another] and have never had this problem. Googling is hit and miss about kernel problems, etc...
I tried gentoo. The boot cd [2004.0] worked [2.4.24-something, the 2004.1 cd didn't] but would not work with acpi.
.config against my desktop [running gentoo with 2.4.26] and couldn't spot anything. Essentially I think it just didn't set the built-in keyboard as a default. The boot gets to local [e.g. passes through hotplug and all the other jazz] but just won't accept keyboard input.
Most likely I missed a config option but I checked the laptop's
Knoppix isn't for me as I need the flexibility of Gentoo, I crave it!!!
The big deal with me is attrition, after spending hours doing a bootstrap build only to find the kernel didn't work [and I tried various configs with USB disabled, enabled, etc] it still didn't work I lost my patience.
Most likely there's a single line in a mysterious config file somewhere I have to change to get the keyboard to work but again I want to *USE* my laptop not build Linux over and over and over with it [including the wear/tear that puts the laptop through].
Tom
As much as that sounds plausible it's not always. My Presario 2180CA laptop [for instance] is fairly Linux resilient. ACPI crashes it and repeatedly it fails to detect the keyboard [I've never had to "configure" a keyboard]. It got to the point where I just put WinXP on my laptop [well the copy that came with my laptop] because I simply just wanted to *USE* my laptop.
So really hardware vendors have to stop cutting corners before you can just blanket state "oh just use Linux".
Tom
Well, on the plus side renting TV station costs money, in turn causes taxation.
;-)
Those idiots on TV praising jebuz are funding your military. now if you didn't have a warlord president you'd have your ABC's in school instead of your Afghanistan, Bombing, Country's.
Makes me totally sick that they can legitimately spend billions on a war that NOBODY else but the bush puppet Blair supports and then actively screw millions of young adults out of post secondary education.
Anyways back on topic. if you look at TV from a digital cables point of view you need only one channel [well then channels for people you share the cable with]. So this 66 channels of "nothing on" is really waste anyways.
People with analogue tv's ought to get in the modern age. [Or just skip TV and read more].
Tom
It's called ratings. People see low ratings they don't buy advertising during your show. That means the TV network won't want to carry your show.
;-)
In the end most [really] bad shows work themselves off the air quickly. The other 95% of quality made low story-content shows [re: friends, seinfeld, etc...] linger on forever...
Which begs another question, what lets you decide what is a "good" use of spectrum? Lots of people watch Friends but I still think it's a cliche tired boring pathetic wannabe comedy [I'd rather watch "family matters"].
Tom
I don't think anyone says that nuclear waste should just be stored in peoples basements or something.
Alternatives are good but you have to measure the whole system [e.g. as a closed system]. If it takes you X units of energy [W or J take your pick] to produce Y units of energy than the Y/X ratio is a rough estimate of the effectiveness.
So while it's good to promote alternative energy research mindlessly saying "down with nuclear" has serious downfalls. Less computers, no A/C, less cars, less entertainment, etc, etc, etc...
Not the end of the world but it's not a price most people are willing to pay.
Tom
Yeah, hydrodams just polute [re: lead, iron and various chemicals] lakes. Solar cells are made of things that can kill humans [and many animals], don't last forever AND MUST BE THROWN OUT!
It's easy to say "oh nuclear power bad" but the risk/waste/gain ratio is probably not that bad all considering. Nuclear power most certainly makes more power than both Solar and Wind combined.
But fine cut nuclear out. Just stop driving cars, using computers and eating packaged food. All that takes energy that solar/wind alone probably could not provide.
Tom
"No nuclear waste, no potential for meltdowns, no potential for dirty bombs, etc ec"
I'll take it you haven't spent much time in the "real world". Please define anything profitable [$$$, energy or otherwise] that is "totally without risk"?
Heck even hydrodams polute and damage the environment. Solar cells are made of totally messy materials, wind generators disturb air flows, etc, etc, etc...
With enough precautions anything can be acceptably safe [e.g. not likely to cause serious harm] but nothing is totally safe.
Tom
"No child left behind act." So long as you don't want post-secondary education cuz afterall what's another 25 billion dollars to fund a war crime...
Seems to me what the US needs is a complete 180 turn in policy. Chop down the miliary *while* heavily subsidizing post-secondary education. Give the war-brats [young 20s] who signed up with the military an easy ride [e.g. scholarships] through school.
Of course you won't see that happening... it's not politically motivating.
[sick comment]
I'm not surprised about what happened to Berg. Why? Simple. What better way to gain support for the war specially in light of the various abuse "scandals". It would not surprise me to find that those 5 people in the video were either americans or funded by americans.
[/sick comment]
I like this one better. ;-)
Tom
"...it [open source] lets vendors compete at virtually no cost ..."
And that's a bad thing? Maybe prices in the US are over-inflated compared to say, I dunno, THE REST OF THE WORLD?
Sorry if you think 60k/yr is what a software programmer should make but that's not what the rest of the world thinks.
That article was nothing more than whining for "the good ole days" before people had much choice about things...
Tom
The kernel is a small part of the OS though.
MS in this case could take the userland tools and kernel, release those under GPL but then make their own proprietary hotplug/portage database which is not GPL.
So you couldn't just buy one copy of MS-Linux and re-sell it since the distribution is not GPL, just certain components of it.
Tom
1. Is it compatible with GB, GBC and GBA games?
2. Battery life?
3. Did they fix any of the annoying problems from the GBA (more SRAM, wider data bus, faster cpu, larger screen pixel count)?
If all they did was tack on a touch sensitive screen to the GBA SP then we're gonna be stuck with the same SNES re-write lame-ass side scrolling games...
Sure PocketNES is fun er... I mean e-reader but I would love to be able to play quake or something on a portable [other than a 500$ PDA].
Tom
Unfortunately it doesn't do anything. That's why you have to run programs like athcool or vcool to actually get it to power down.
Yeah, I'm the first person to notice AMD cpus produce heat.
/. drool-boys I actually *used* my cpu. Under full load it doesn't take much to get an AMD cpu really hot with modest cooling.
Except unlike most
Tom
Athlon-XPs don't have easily accessible idle modes. Intel processors do [via HLT opcode]. So when both boxes are idle the PM is taking 6W and the Athlon-XP is basically taking the full power.
;-)
So the diff is really 64W or 0.064Kwh so diff is around 2.2 years.
Though the stability of Intel cpus alone is worth it. Have yet to have my P4 box shutdown because a 10 minute test run of a program [full load] over heats the core...
Tom
Yeah but that's such a scam. My cpu has a 800Mhz FSB. Nice right? Goes perfect with my 400Mhz DDR memory....
All this quad/double pumping sounds nice but hides a problem that really is the bottleneck. LATENCY!
That is my cpu can only send control info over the bus at 200Mhz. So while it can send 6GB/sec to my Northbridge if I fetch stuff from random addresses I effectively have a 200Mhz bus....
I'm sure what will save the Dothan is the huge 2MB cache [provided it has a decently high hit rate].
Tom
Meh, gaming is neat and all but that's no reason to run Windows. Besides the more pressue there is to support Linux the more likely it will happen.
Besides if you just bought that computer for games mind trading it for my xbox? It can play games too. At least I could put the AMD64 to good use.
Tom
Cold Cathode light etc.
NVIDIA logo etched on the window
Yup, true gamer
Let me guess, running WinXP?
Tom
Being a gamer of the 80's/90's and having NEVER played Civ [though I have played warcraft etc] solely because the game didn't appeal doesn't really make him sound like a computing god to revere.
I dunno how about the inventors of the Burrow-Wheeler-Transform [BWT] which is used by thousands of people daily [bzip2 for instance].
How about Lenstra, Pollard et al. for inventing the Quadratic Sieve and other factoring algorithms that put public key crypto into perspective?
What about Donald Knuth [if he's not already in there] for putting Computer Science in a accurate and concise series of texts? And inventing TeX a system quite a few people use to submit academic papers, write books and score music.
etc...
Stupid game developers while cool and all are not that influential. I'm sure the world would go on as normal if Doom3 didn't hit the shelves this year... etc...
Tom
I smell of a lot of things but not cheese ;-)
;-)
Anyways yeah that's about what I expect. This upcoming monday is the 60th day. Next tuesday if I don't have my laptop back I'm demanding a replacement laptop on the spot.
If they refuse I'm gonna see what 2000$ worth of electronic organizers look like under my feet
Tom
I dropped my laptop off [clicking harddisk that would lock up] March 19th.
When I called in mid april they told me the 60 days starts from when Compaq gets it [which was March 28th] cuz otherwise that wouldn't be fair for the store.
I told them to f off and read them the 400$ warranty claim I bought when I got my laptop. So in around 10 days I either get my laptop back or a brand new one.
But seriously, replacing the hardisk and testing takes all of an hour todo. Fuck if they just bought me a hard disk I could do it myself....
I'd take your sentiment further though. Laptops are nice to have when they work but they're useless [and expensive] when in the shop. I make money by writing software. Not having a laptop to work with when I'm at school sets me back [fortunately I have a desktop at home...].
My advice would be to lease not buy a laptop. That way when the laptop breaks you just don't pay the lease. Sure it may cost more [usual lease being 50-100$/mo] but considering I paid 2000$ for my laptop and only planned on keeping it for 3 years [max] not having it for two months is a pain.
Tom
1600$ laptop + 400$ warranty + 0$ self-mod case == useless warranty.
This guide may be ok if you're past the manufacturers warranty and you didn't get an instore one...
But for me, I got a 3yr [practically useless] warranty from Futureshop. I'll let them [or their sub-contractors] fix problems with my laptop.
Though if I had todo it again I would probably a) not buy a laptop and b) not get an extended warranty. It's been nearly 60 days since I dropped of my laptop to have the hard drive replaced.
nearly 90% of the time Futureshop had my laptop it was sitting in their warehouse awaiting transport...Such a waste.
Tom